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Sunday, August 09, 2009

Ancestral Quest Releases New Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System and Helper Access

Salt Lake City, Utah (July 24, 2009) – Today Incline Software announced the release of two major new feature sets in its product, Ancestral Quest (AQ). AQ was the first desktop family tree product to interface with New FamilySearch (NFS), and these new features continue to expand the ways in which Ancestral Quest works with New FamilySearch. The first of these is the Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System (ORTS), which allows a user who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to determine whether the records in his/her personal family tree database have had all the LDS temple work completed, and if not, to reserve those ordinances, create Family Ordinances Requests (FORs), and track the progress of the ordinance work while updating their personal records along the way. The other feature is a Helper Access capability, which allows one person who has access to the New FamilySearch.org website to sign in to help another person, usually someone who does not yet have access.

Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System (ORTS). Ancestral Quest has received Ordinance Reservation and Ordinance Request certification from FamilySearch. AQ’s new ORTS will provide LDS users with the following capabilities:

See at a glance which PAF or AQ records are missing LDS ordinances.

Link PAF or AQ records with their corresponding records in New FamilySearch, or allow these records to be uploaded to New FamilySearch if NFS is missing them.

View the official temple ordinance records for these individuals. If the local PAF or AQ record is out of date, easily download temple records to keep the local records accurate. If ordinance work needs to be done, then reserve the ordinances immediately. If the official temple records are missing ordinance information, this information can be uploaded from the local PAF or AQ record into the temple system, so that the ordinances will not be duplicated.

Reserve any ordinance to be assigned either to the temples or to the user. For example, the baptism could be reserved for the user to handle, and the confirmation could be reserved for the temples to handle.

Unreserve ordinances. Whether a user has reserved an ordinance using AQ’s ORTS, or by using another product, such as NFS to reserve the ordinance, AQ will allow the ordinances to be unreserved. Gaylon Findlay, president of Incline software, stated, "Many LDS members have reserved ordinances only to find out later that the work had already been done. By unreserving the ordinances, the user can now add the ordinance information to that individual’s record in NFS or combine the individual with another record in NFS that already contains the ordinance information. This feature will help stop individual instances of ordinance duplication."

Create Family Ordinance Requests (FORs). The user can select several reserved ordinances to be printed on an FOR, which can then be taken to a local temple where the ordinance cards can be printed.

Track the progress of reserved records. In addition, if the user has already reserved ordinances through another system, like NFS, these records can be downloaded into AQ’s tracking system to make it easier to update the local PAF or AQ records.

Assign printed ordinance cards to others. Once a user has printed ordinance cards, these can be assigned to friends, relatives or other church members to take to the temple. ORTS will record which person has possession of the card, and will let the user track the progress of these cards by assignee.

Helper Access. Ancestral Quest has been Helper certified by FamilySearch. The Helper Access function is very important to LDS users, especially in Utah and Idaho, where many do not yet have access to New FamilySearch. The LDS Church has been sending out notices indicating that it will require that all ordinances be submitted through New FamilySearch. Most of the LDS Church members in these areas have their personal records stored in the Church’s desktop application, Personal Ancestral File (PAF), which was derived from an earlier version of AQ. This new feature allows a PAF user, as well as AQ users, to bring his/her PAF or AQ database into a local Family History Center (FHC) and request that one of the staff members use Ancestral Quest to sign into New FamilySearch as a helper, open up their database in AQ, and use the Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System to reserve names for temple work and produce the necessary FORs. According to Gaylon Findlay, "We are very excited about this new capability, which will help PAF users as well as users of AQ throughout many areas of Utah and Idaho to reserve their ordinances without duplication, and to prepare the Family Ordinance Request. This is an answer to the question many have had as to how to continue to use the data they have collected in PAF for many years, while moving forward with the LDS Church’s new methods of reserving names for temple work."

These new features are a free upgrade to users of AQ versions 12.0 and 12.1.

Incline Software has been developing Ancestral Quest for over 15 years. Products derived from Ancestral Quest include PAF (Personal Ancestral File) and AFT (Ancestry Family Tree). The millions of users of these products will find that they can use these new tools in Ancestral Quest without having to learn a new software program. According to Gaylon Findlay, "Over the last 10 years, since we helped the LDS Church with their Windows versions of PAF, millions of PAF users have experienced the features of Ancestral Quest. They will find, now that PAF has not been updated to work with NFS, that Ancestral Quest is the easiest desktop program for them to migrate to, as they will find that most screens and reports are similar or identical in AQ, and that AQ can help them connect their PAF data to NFS. PAF users can even continue to use PAF and simply use AQ’s additional features as an add-on to PAF."

Free Trial. To find out more about Ancestral Quest or Incline Software, or to download the 60-day free trial of Ancestral Quest, visit the web site www.ancquest.com or call Incline Software at 1-800-825-8864. Several training tutorials to help users get the most out of AQ are available online at no charge.